WORKING LIFE PODCAST: HEALTH CARE WORKERS AND TRANSIT WORKERS FACE THE PANDEMIC - a podcast by The Real News Network

EPISODE 175

The other night I was watching an episode of Season 3 of Ozark and there was a scene in which the mother, played by Laura Linney, walks out of a supermarket with her son, both of them pushing a shopping cart. My head went immediately to, without a thought: I hope they sanitized that bar on the cart where their hands were placed…and then a few seconds later I laughed. That is where our heads are at these days—but, for lots of frontline workers out there, it’s all very real, deadly real, terrifyingly real.

So, again, this week you are going to hear about those workers—today it’s health care workers and transit workers as I talk with the leaders of two very important unions: Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 180,000 health care workers, and John Samuelsen, the president of the Transport Workers Union, whose members work on the buses, rail and airlines all across the country. Perhaps not coincidentally, both of them are New Yorkers with a real feel for the pandemic bomb hitting that city.

The workers we are going to hear about—and this is not dramatic exaggeration—are getting sick and dying because of the pandemic, in no small part because of the malfeasance, ignorance and just plain simple “We don’t give a crap about workers” attitude that has meant a lack of equipment to protect folks from the virus.

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